by GERARD S. HOFF aka (GONG SAN HO)

Month: December 2017

Pu-Tai (which means ‘cloth bag’) was a man of few words, in fact he hardly ever spoke. On the few occasions that he did speak he would reply to questions about why he did what he did. He then explained that handing out sweets was symbolic for the notion that the more you give, the more you receive.

His bag represented the problems all people encounter in life.

Instead of clinging to them you should distance yourself from a problem by putting it down (just like he would put the bag down) and laugh at it, because whether you laugh or cry the problem is not going to change. The magic lies in the laughter and more precisely the power of laughter. Pu-Tai believed that the power of laughing made problems smaller and more easily to handle.

And the man had a very good grasp on things even a thousand years ago, because apparently when you laugh the body produces certain feel good hormones and enzymes. And when you feel good, you might look at your problems differently.

Pu-Tai lived a life of laughter and even when he died he pulled the biggest prank of all. When he felt his end coming near, the monk asked his close companions to immediately burn his body after his death. They were surprised because cremation was not a custom in Zen buddhism. But his wishes were granted and as soon as they set fire to his body, fireworks started to fly everywhere.

Apparently he had hid a lot of crackers and rockets in his clothes in order to create laughter even when the matter was grave.

Did you laugh today?

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